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Canvas Apps for the Model-driven mind

2.
Agenda
• The PowerApps plan for world domination
• Current reality: Canvas vs. Model-driven apps
• Demo: what can a citizen developer build?
• Tips for building Canvas apps on CDS
• A platform for Makers or for Developers?

5.
The story so far
• In the beginning there was MS CRM (2003)
• Which grew into XRM with custom entities (2005)
• And went into the cloud (2008)
• It learned to deliver Solutions (2011)
• Was branded as Dynamics 365 (2016)
• Started migrating to Azure (2017)
• Merged with PowerApps (2018)

9.
The REAL Unified
Client?
“Artificial limitations in app
features will be removed, so that
choosing [File - New App] will
give you model or canvas
experiences and everything will
work across both.”
- Charles Lamanna
https://www.nz365guy.com/power-platform-changes-and-
answering-community-questions-with-charles-lamanna/

10.
1 + 1 + Portals = …1?
• With Dynamics Portals
reimagined as PowerApps
Portals, we have one more app
type in our LCAP
• Critical for the external app
audience story, yet nothing like a
public version of Canvas or
Model-driven apps - today
• In the fullness of time, also
Portals need to adopt common
technology like PowerApps
Component Framework

13.
• Design and build a business app from a
canvas in Microsoft PowerApps without
writing code in a traditional programming
language such as C#.
• Design the app by dragging and dropping
elements onto a canvas, just as you would
design a slide in PowerPoint. Create Excel-
like expressions for specifying logic and
working with data.
• Build apps that integrate business data
from a wide variety of Microsoft and
third-party sources.
• Share your app so that users can run it in
a browser or on a mobile device, and
embed your app so that users can run it in
SharePoint, Power BI, or Teams.
• If you don't need a custom design and
your data is in Common Data Service, you
can automatically generate a model-
driven app from your business data and
processes.
• Model-driven app design is a component-
focused approach to app development.
Model-driven app design doesn’t require
code and the apps you make can be
simple or very complex.
• Unlike canvas app development where the
designer has complete control over app
layout, with model-driven apps much of
the layout is determined for you and
largely designated by the components you
add to the app.

14.
The Real shift
in thinking
Old world
• Apps are an afterthought
• Systems are defined primarily as a data
model
• Users are trained to understand how the
system works
New world
• Apps are the sole purpose
• Data flows in & out from various different
sources
• Apps are designed to fit the way how the
users work

15.
App Designer: Model-driven world
Microsoft Dynamics 365 FastTrack TechTalks: Solution Development
App modules are used for restricting and organizing
the components that are visible to the app’s target
users.
Constructing the visible & invisible
components that make up the complete
functioning app is done inside solutions.

18.
Why Excel rules
• Excel is the original Canvas for
information workers to paint
their data on
• Structure without enforcement,
logic without programming
• Immediate recalculation of the
whole app (workbook) to show
the effect of your tweaks
• Both Excel and PowerApps
Canvas apps are “terrible”, but
they support the problem solving
thought process of most humans

20.
Tips for building
Canvas
apps on CDS data
Photo by Fas Khan on Unsplash

21.
Don’t start from blank
• When learning how to use CDS data
in a Canvas app, first always generate
the app from data
• You get core plumbing that will feel a
lot more approachable thank a blank
canvas
• You can add & delete anything you want
• Whenever possible, avoid using
Dynamics 365 connector and go for
CDS

22.
App starting point: Model-driven vs.
Canvas
• ”Generate from data”
gives you a nice single
entity experience with
basic CRUD capability
• Anything you don’t
see is for you to build:
• Navigation
• Filters
• Actions (buttons)
• Summaries (count)
• EVERYTHING you see
can be customized

23.
Galleries instead of views
• Gallery is the most important control to
master in Canvas apps
• (There is also a control called Data Table,
but you shouldn’t really ever use it)
• Shows the contents of a single data
source (CDS entity), just like a view
would, but it’s not just a database view
with columns
• Presentation of data in the gallery item
template is extremely flexible
• Conditional display of fields, icons, strings,
label styles, pictures
• Append data from other sources, also
other systems

24.
Filtering: the hard way & the easy way
• Data sources will by default bring in the
whole table
• The lack of built-in view selector component
means two things:
• You’re free to design beautiful preset filter
options for the user
• You have to implement every condition, search
term, sorting in your formula
• ”Items” may well be the most scary looking
formula in your whole Canvas app
• Support for CDS views as the source for
Gallery Items is now in preview!

25.
No context = everything is
universally referenceable
• The biggest conceptual difference to Model-driven apps is
that you’re never “in” any entity or any record
• Whichever control or variable you point to in your formula
is the source of record context
• AccountGallery.Selected, CurrentUser,
First(LeadsCollection)
• The whole app on every screen is recalculated after any
change made by the user
Photo by Varya Lapina on Unsplash

26.
Current CDS user: you’ve got email
• Because CDS is just one of many data
sources, there’s no concept of logged in
CDS user in the app by default
• Security is of course applied to data
source, but further filtering down the data
or prepopulating lookups needs
additional work
• You’ll need to pull in the Azure AD login
info, then match it to User entity based
on email field
• You could just use User().Email, but do it like
Shane Young does and use Office365Users
connector instead

27.
Subgrids for related records: just ”dot” it!
• Earlier you had to build
cumbersome Filter formulas to
match 1:N record with primary &
foreign key fields (GUIDs)
• Now that relational data support
feature has graduated from
Experimental stage, you can directly
reference ”parent.children”

29.
Conditional formatting
• Compared to the static format of data inside Model-driven apps,
the rich expressions of Canvas apps were born to highlight
important data
• Example: change background color based on status field
• TemplateFill: If(Text(ThisItem.Status) <> "Open", RGBA(241, 244, 249, 1),
RGBA(0, 0, 0, 0))
• Use switch case for showing different icons for different record
values to make UI even more intuitive
• Downside: you’ll also need to manually handle formats like
DateTime and numbers (since Canvas app doesn’t follow any CDS
user preferences)

30.
Search is great!
(except…)
• Instant filtering of gallery results
once the user starts typing into the
text input field
• Can match the search string with
multiple fields concurrently
• Combine text search with filters set
in other controls
• Except: you can’t search from
complex lookups like ”Customer”
• Dirty hack: copy lookup values to
shadow text fields on CDS side
Photo by Anthony Martino on Unsplash

31.
XRM pain points that can be
addressed in Canvas apps
• Unaware of user’s context: every entity &
command is shown all the time
• Flat navigation structure: everything app area is
seemingly of equal importance
• Pain of reducing choices: hiding actions from
the user is laborious
• Lack of guidance: hard to take users through a
predetermined path (RIP Dialogs)
Photo by Francisco Gonzalez on Unsplash

32.
Price of pixel perfection
• In Model-driven apps you could always blame
the platform for not displaying things in the
most usable way
• With Canvas apps, every pixel imperfection
and UX gap is now squarely YOUR fault👈
• Logical navigation experience is the first
priority you need to deliver in your app
• The more complex you make the UI, the more
time it will take to polish
Photo by Daniel Korpai on Unsplash

33.
Remember to play
around with your
apps
• Use temporary labels, galleries to see your
data change as your formulas evolve
• Store stuff in variables, collections to reach
your final composition
• Use a tablet layout for more side-by-side
screen estate, even if you’re targeting
phone screens in final app
• Keep a proper text editor like Notepad++
available at all times to copy & paste the
pieces together
• Have the PowerApps Formula Reference
documentation page on a browser tab
Photo by Taelynn Christopher on Unsplash

34.
A platform
for Makers
or for
Developers?
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

35.
No-code or Low-code?
Forrester’s take:
• ”The vendors in this
evaluation target
professional
developers as their
primary customers and
address other
participants as
secondary audiences.”

36.
No-code or Low-code?
Gartner’s take:
• ”A low-code application platform (LCAP) is an application platform that supports rapid application
development, one-step deployment, execution and management using declarative, high-level
programming abstractions, such as model-driven and metadata-based programming languages.”
• “Gartner views “no-code” application platforms as part of the LCAP market. “No-code” is a marketing
and positioning statement, implying that the platform requires text entry only for formulas or simple
expressions, all other aspects of application development being enabled by visual modeling or
configuration.”

37.
Low-code = more accessible way to write code
This does look a little bit
”cody”, but it’s actually
not that complicated
when compared to doing
it in ”classic code”.
Scott Durow, Power Platform Unpacked #4
• Developers can go
further with Canvas
apps than functional
consultants ever
would try
• …But first you have
to get them to try,
too
• “Canvas apps are
easy but not
necessarily simple”
• (Quote source)

38.
PCF = making UI extensions scalable
• Every new control in PowerApps
(Canvas or Model-driven) is
already a component from MS
• PowerApps Component
Framework (PCF) components is
what every developer should be
creating
• So that every maker with access
to that component could put it
into their application
• For every user to interact with
http://aka.ms/PCFdemos